Gender and Race

Isabella Corredor

Professor Richardson

PHI/WGS 297

Blog Post #2

Sally Haslanger's main thesis is to define what gender is. She says it does mean something to be a woman, as is evidenced by the way that society treats men and women differently. To Haslanger, all there is to being a woman is to be treated a certain, distinctive way by one's society. So, being a woman is simply being oppressed by one's society. I agree with Haslanger in the sense that from the second you are born a girl, you are already held to a lower standard. For women, being a woman is already putting her at a disadvantage, along with any other "real" disadvantages she may have, such as her race or academic qualifications. To contrast, for men, being male is something he has "going for him" even if his race or class is against him. However, Haslanger's definition of being a woman poses an interesting contemporary issue. I would be curious to know what Haslanger would say about transgender people. If all there is to being a woman is being oppressed, why would people voluntarily chose to live that way? Why would people make themselves vulnerable to oppression when they don't have to be? Transgender people have extremely high suicide rates and risk being harmed by others so there must be a reason they choose to become a woman; There must be something more to being a woman. But then it's also interesting to consider the commonality problem, which begs the question is there anything that all females (of different times, places, and cultures) have in common? Females as a group are so diverse and their qualities range so much that maybe there is no single quality to point to that unites all of them. If there isn't one single quality, than maybe Haslanger's definition of women is the best one. People make the objection that defining "women" will always marginalize some females and privilege others. While I agree this can be true in certain cases and I don't think her definition is perfect, at the same time I don't necessarily know what would be a better one.

Haslanger also states that you are a woman if you are seen to have a female body and occupy a subordinate social position. She disagrees with the traits that Hale described women as having. But this definition poses another issue. What about women who have high positions in society? Some argue that a woman can have high social power, but being a woman will always be something she has against her. So if you compare a woman with a high level of social power and a man with a high level of social power, the woman will always fall short. Another aspect of her article I found very interesting is how intertwined gender and race are. Women of color arguably have it the hardest because they are seen to have two qualities "going against them"; their race and their gender. A black or hispanic man is devalued for his race but he at least still has his gender going for him. While race isn't seen to be biological in the sense that gender is, both people of color and women are seen as subordinate. My favorite part of Haslanger's piece was her ending. "But rather than worrying, "what is gender, really" or "what is race, really" I think we should begin by asking (both in the theoretical and political sense) what, if anything, we want them to be."